Analysis 2015 List Analysis and Comparison

[bontshow]

He's grown to 194cm now apparently

He's not even the rising star mate :stern look:

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Really enjoyable read Dan(n^n). Looking forward to this thread developing.

Little bit random, but related:

Do you think our height profile may have anything to do with the interchange rules, and trying to build a team light on talls (bare minimum for coverage/functionality) and heavy on runners with skills?

It's actually not a bad theory and one I hadn't really considered. Most of the players selected in the draft this year have good endurance (Caleb Daniel and Declan Hamilton in particular) which also supports your suggestion. It might be part of the theory - with the rotation cap likely to continue decreasing in the years to come players that can run all day will become more and more important.

The theory I'd formulated is a little different but no more correct than yours. I believe our talls have been given an extremely raw deal at both ends of the ground. Our defenders have little hope of competing as they're often subjected to extremely quick, precise entries due to minimal defensive pressure and turnovers further up the ground. Our forwards are rarely given any form of quick or accurate delivery. We've stocked up on midfielders recently but a lot of them are either poor or just average kicks. As a result of this, I think we feel as though we don't know enough about our tall forwards or our tall defenders to determine whether or not they're good enough because of issues in the middle of the ground. We went into the draft this year with a focus on correcting these issues in the middle of the ground. We overcompensated and gathered a collection of very good kicks/decision makers, knowing that the chances of getting five hits in the draft was unlikely - if we can get two or three of these types out of the players we've drafted, we've gone some way to correcting the ball distribution/turnover issues in one draft. By correcting these issues we can get a better idea of how good our talls are, and then make calls further down the track on what needs more stocking up. Note that I don't think we went into the draft seeking to take four players under 183cm and one at 186cm - I think we just sought to look for best available player with good skills and decision making, and it just fell this way. Also a consideration, I imagine, was the picks at our disposal - talls have a considerably smaller chance than smalls at making the grade after around pick 20 - and all of our picks were after this. From all reports we were interested in key position players at our pick 6 when we still had it, which further supports this suggestion.

I also think it's important to have a look at the key defenders on our list and consider where they're at in their development. We only have one 'established' key defender - Morris - and he's not even really a key defender. Past that we have five 'developing' key defenders: Hamling, Talia, Roberts, Roughead and Z. Cordy, as well as two that have played tall when necessary in Kelly and Wood. This is an enormous number of developing players in the same area of the ground. If we play, for example, Roughead, Talia, Morris and Wood at AFL level, we're playing Hamling, Roberts, Cordy and Kelly at VFL level. If you add any more key defenders into this mix you would probably be playing them out of position at whatever level they play - how can a developing, young player adjust to his role if he's not playing the right role? I agree we're light on for players that can play on the 'monster' or 'gorilla' forwards but I don't think we could afford to add another developing type into this mix at this point. Ideally we got a more mature key defender in to protect the developing types and allow them to adjust to their roles - but we tried to do so, and couldn't get them across the line.

Of course, this is all theoretical and not a sure thing to be correct at all. Overall I think it's a combination of factors - and your idea could well be one of them. I certainly think we've attempted to bring in more endurance athletes this off-season.

 

[TempletonTheRat]

I have been reading and following this post with interest

I have crunched some numbers myself based on heights listed on Hawks website
Hawthorn average height
all 46 players = 188.28
excl B rookies = 188.11
excl all rookies = 187.95
Grand Final starting 22 = 187.45

So as you filter the hawthorn list down to their starting 22 the average height gets smaller and is actually more than 0.5cm below the AFL average

When I looked at the Hawthorn Grand Final starting 22 I found the following

* 4 players were under 180cm - Mitchell (179), Duryea (179), Rioli (177), Puopolo (173)
* They have no key defenders that are taller than 195cm
* The only players over 195cm are rucks (one of which will play as a key forward)
* The tallest midfielder is Isaac Smith at 188cm - then Langford (187) the rest are 186 or below.

This suggests to me that the Hawks have invested in Talls as development players because they are not tall on the field.
Being a mature team who has a deep developed midfield they can afford to do this.
If a group of developing talls are not ready for premiership footy they buy in a stop gap (Gibson, Lake, Frawley etc) - which will only increase their overall average height

If I run the same height averages for the Bulldogs the trend is the opposite - our average height gets taller as we filter to our best 22* (even if I keep Daniel in the 22)
By my reckoning our best 22 is taller than Hawthorns (that is a subjective opinion though)

This tells me we have invested more in smaller midfield types as depth players
We are still building up a midfield, creating depth and future sustainability.

We are in a totally different stage to Hawthorn.
The Hawks have a developed and experienced core and are able to recruit & develop to plug gaps
We are still building our core and need to firstly recruit & develop to sustain this core before plugging remaining gaps

The Hawks GF 22 also suggests to me that any correlation between Height and Success is only playing a very small part if any !!

Other things I noted
Caleb Daniel has a large impact on the team average
Our rookies are much smaller than the Hawks rookies - in fact the rookie list plays a big part in making up the differences on our lists

Excluding rookies and Caleb Daniel - Hawthorn = 187.95 : Western Bulldogs 187.84

 

[Pannalstaroz]

Module 1, Part 1: Height (by Overall Distribution)

Western Bulldogs Overall
Yay for histograms that do my work for me.

As you can see, our peak frequency occurs in the 181-185cm range, with 14 of 44 players (31.82%) fitting within this range. Given that the AFL average height is 188.30cm, this is perhaps indicative of a list with relatively more players under 189cm than expected. This is supported by the club's mean height of 186.82cm - just under two centimetres below the AFL average.

The histogram appears to indicate that this skew is caused by an above-expected proportion of players within the 181-185cm range and a below-expected proportion of players within the 196-200cm range. Not exactly surprising.

Some other tidbits:

• Our most frequent height is 182cm, with six players (Clay Smith, Daniel Pearce, Josh Prudden, Bailey Dale, Declan Hamilton and Roarke Smith) coming in at this height.
• Our median height is 186cm - approximately equal to our mean height.
• Despite our list being 2cm lower than the league average, Caleb Daniel still shows up as a statistical outlier in our list.
• Our list's height profile is approximately normally distributed (Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic = .123, p = .095, for those who care [probably not many - myself included]).
• Our standard deviation is 7.67cm.

Layman's conclusion: We are shorter than the AFL average by about 2cm, likely due mostly to an abundance of players within the 181-185cm range.


Hawthorn Overall

As shown in the above histogram, the Hawthorn list's height profile is congregated quite heavily within the 176-195 range, with only seven of 47 players (14.89%) falling outside this range. Their most frequent height range is 191-195cm, with 27.66% of their list falling within this range. It paints a picture of a list that would appear to be above the AFL average - but this is not the case. The Hawks' average height is 188.28cm, falling 0.02 centimetres below the AFL player average.

Some other tidbits:

• Hawthorn's most frequent height is 193cm, with six players - Jarryd Roughead, Grant Birchall, Jack Gunston, Tim O'Brien, Kurt Heatherley and James Frawley - coming in at this height.
• Their median height is 188.5cm - approximately equal to their mean height.
• Their list profile is approximately normally distributed (KS = .105, p > .200).
• Their standard deviation is 7.40.

Layman's conclusion: Hawthorn's list is very slightly smaller than the AFL average, but features an abundance of players in the 186-195cm range.

Brisbane Overall

The distribution of player height in Brisbane's list is interesting - 24 (51.06%) players are either between 181-185cm or 191-195cm, with only 17.02% fitting in between the 186-190cm range. They also have a total of 17.02% of players in the upper key position player range of 196-200cm. This all combines to give a mean height of 189.23cm - just under 1cm above the AFL player average height.

Some other tidbits:

• Brisbane's most frequent height is 192cm, with five players - Luke McGuane, Nick Robertson, Tom Cutler, Matt Maguire and Jackson Paine - fitting within this range.
• Their median height is 190cm - significantly larger than their mean height (most likely due to having so many more players above 196cm than below 181cm).
• Their list profile is approximately normally distributed (KS = .099, p > .200).
• Their standard deviation is 7.05cm.

Layman's conclusion: Brisbane's list is, on average, taller than the AFL average player height, due primarily to possessing a large number of 196-200cm players.

St Kilda Overall

St Kilda's list is, on average, approximately 0.41cm below the AFL average player height, with a mean height of 187.89cm. This is illustrated by a relatively even frequency plot. 11 players (24.44%) are between 191cm and 195cm, with 10 (22.22%) between 181-185cm, 8 (17.78%) between 186-190cm, and 6 (13.33%) between 176-180cm. It's also worth noting that 8.89% of their list is above 200cm, which is larger than expected.

Some other tidbits:

• St Kilda's most frequent height is 194cm, with five players - Tom Lee, Dylan Roberton, Sam Gilbert, Luke Delaney and Patrick McCartin - coming in at this height.
• Their median height is 188cm - approximately equal to their mean height.
• Their list profile is approximately normally distributed (KS = .074, p > .200).
• Their standard deviation is 7.42cm.

Layman's conclusion: The Saints are slightly below the AFL average height despite possessing 11 players between 191-195cm, and four above 200cm - likely due to an abundance of players below 186cm, and few between 196-200cm.

Western Bulldogs vs. Hawthorn vs. Brisbane vs. St Kilda - General
I've used a box plot to best illustrate the comparisons here:

For the record, that open circle drifting somewhere in the middle of nowhere on our column is Caleb Daniel being his statistical-outlying self.

Simply, this diagram shows that our median height (the thick, black, horizontal line) is lower than all three other sides. Brisbane's median in particular is significantly larger than ours, meaning that if you order all players from shortest to tallest, Brisbane's middle player is taller than ours (for the record, it's looking at Lukas Webb/Easton Wood vs. Hugh Beasley - a difference of four centimetres).

It also shows that our 75th percentile (the line on top of the yellow box) player is quite a bit shorter than those of the other clubs. More explicitly, similar to the median, if we line up all of the players from shortest to tallest, the player in the 75th percentile for height on our list (mid-way between Jake Stringer and Jarrad Grant - so 191.5cm) is shorter than those of the other clubs (Jack Gunston/Grant Birchall, Justin Clarke and Patrick McCartin).

With a median and 75th percentile lower than all three comparison teams', it is reasonable to expect that our 25th percentile (the line on the bottom of the yellow box) would be lower than the other teams'; that is, the player in the 25th percentile for height on our list (Bailey Dale) would be shorter than those in the 25th percentile for height on the other three teams' lists (Alex Woodward, James Aish/Jed Adcock and David Armitage). In the case of Brisbane and St Kilda, this is true - however, Dale is the same height as Woodward. The difference between Dale and the others is also quite a bit less than the difference was for our median/75th percentile players. This makes the difference between our 25th and 75th percentiles much smaller than those of the other sides.

So what does this actually mean? Basically, that if you order our players from shortest to tallest, and locate our middle 50% of players in terms of height, they are clustered within a relatively small height range compared to other sides. Visually, our list's height distribution is fat and short rather than narrow and long; we have more players that are very similar height-wise to the median than the other three sides do. This is supported by simply eyeballing our list's height. 29 players on our list - 65.91% - slot in between 180cm and 192cm. Compare this to 52.17% for Hawthorn, 55.31% for Brisbane and 54.35% for St Kilda and you'll see that our list is overly concentrated within these ranges. This is also illustrated by the histograms presented in the opening sections. Not only do we have the most players within the 181-185cm height range (14), we also have the most players within a single height range of any of the teams (second-most is Hawthorn with 13 players coming in at heights between 191cm and 195cm). In simple terms, we've got a lot of eggs in one basket of heights.

Looking at the histograms again, there is more to learn. Despite being significantly shorter than the other sides, we have fewer players under 176cm than St Kilda, the same amount as Brisbane, and only one more than Hawthorn (although, granted, one of our two is the only statistical outlier in the dataset). In the 176-180cm range we are again middle-of-the-road, possessing less than both Hawthorn (8) and St Kilda (6), but more than Brisbane (3) with five players in this range. It is the 181-185cm range, however, that illustrates the points made above. Fourteen players come in at heights within this range, compared to twelve for Brisbane, ten for St Kilda, and only seven for the successful Hawks. Due to this concentration of players with below-average height (and the resulting constraint of list spots), we have significantly less players above the AFL's average height. We possess only 14 players above 190cm, compared to 19 for Hawthorn, 22 for Brisbane, and 18 for St Kilda. To put it in perspective, we have 14 players above 190cm - Hawthorn have 13 in the narrow range of 191-195cm.

Layman's conclusion: A lot of our players are bunched between 180cm and 192cm, leading to a lack of players within the crucial key position height ranges due to restricted list spots, and an overall mix that lines up at a height disadvantage against other clubs.

AFL Overall

As can be seen in the above histogram, the AFL's peak frequency occurs in the 186-190cm range, with 206 of 817 players (25.21%) fitting within this range. This comes at no great surprise given that the average height in the AFL is 188.30cm - right in the middle of these parameters. Perhaps more interestingly, the next most prevalent height range is 181-185cm - a range that was shown to be less popular amongst back-to-back premiers Hawthorn. 196 players - 23.99% - are between these heights. This is considerably higher than the third-most prevalent height range of 191-195cm, with only 150 players (18.36%) being within these heights. Only 25 of 817 individuals in the AFL player population are under 176cm - a percentage of only 3.06%.

Some other tidbits:

• The AFL's most frequently occurring height is 188cm. 48 players - or 5.88% of the AFL player population - are 188cm.
• The AFL's median height is also 188cm.
• The AFL's standard deviation is 7.39cm.

Western Bulldogs vs. the AFL
Again, a box plot is probably the most fitting here:

Before we get into it, I'll define the outliers present in both plots. Caleb Daniel is the outlier on our column (#44). He's also presented in the AFL column as #226. Brent Harvey (North Melbourne; 167cm), Mason Cox (Collingwood; 211cm) and Aaron Sandilands (Fremantle; 211cm) are the three other outliers.


The box plots indicate that our median is significantly lower than the AFL median - 186cm compared to 188cm. It also indicates a 75th percentile (191.5cm) lower than the AFL's 75th percentile of 193cm, and a 25th percentile (182cm) lower than the AFL's 25th percentile (183cm). This indicates a distribution of heights that centre around a lower midpoint than the AFL's overall distribution. This is also backed up by a difference of approximately 1.5cm between our mean height - 186.83cm - and the AFL's - 188.30cm.

It is interesting to note that our inter-quartile range (that is, the height of the yellow box, or the difference between the 75th and 25th percentiles) is only 0.5cm shorter than the AFL's. In simpler terms, the yellow boxes presented above are approximately equal in size. This means that the middle 50% of our distribution is spread across an approximately expected total number of heights; we don't have too many players bunched within too few heights when you look at the middle 50% in isolation. This does appear, however, to contradict what is shown in the histogram comparisons: that we have a larger-than-expected concentration of players within the narrow limits of 181-185cm.

So what does this mean? My conclusion is essentially that, while we have an acceptable number of players spread in these broader ranges, when you begin to narrow the parameters that you're looking at, it becomes clearer that we're disproportionate to what is expected - both compared to other sides, and to the AFL overall. While our middle 50% of heights cover an appropriate range, the distribution within this range is heavily skewed towards shorter heights. Essentially, our distribution is somewhat similar to the AFL's - just shifted towards shorter heights.

Layman's conclusion: Our overall distribution isn't too dissimilar from the AFL's overall distribution, however, it is more biased towards shorter heights than is expected.

In Summary
There is no groundbreaking or shocking facts put forth in this post - simply statistics that back up what many have suspected: compared to other sides we have more players clustered at the short end of the spectrum, resulting in a significantly smaller proportion of taller players. Overall we are quite a bit shorter than the average height for an AFL player due mostly to a massive collection of players between 181 and 185 centimetres. In addition, our most frequent height of 182cm is an enormous ten centimetres lower than that of the next-lowest (Brisbane with 192cm being their most frequent), meaning that we are heavily concentrated at different sizes than the three other sides presented here.

Putting quality, age, experience, position (for now) and all other factors aside, the height profile of our list appears unbalanced and a fair way behind that of the other three clubs - Hawthorn, Brisbane and St Kilda - presented here. In essence, while we have a greater chance than these clubs at finding a competent small, we are spreading our chances way too thin at the opposite end of the spectrum.

*Disclaimer: player heights courtesy of https://www.draftguru.com.au - some may be slightly inaccurate.

I was thinking about the height thing whilst just watching the Freo game replay and then I thought of Boyd and re watched his highlights. I can't wait.

 

[Next Waiting]

1)The theory I'd formulated is a little different but no more correct than yours. I believe our talls have been given an extremely raw deal at both ends of the ground. Our defenders have little hope of competing as they're often subjected to extremely quick, precise entries due to minimal defensive pressure and turnovers further up the ground. Our forwards are rarely given any form of quick or accurate delivery. We've stocked up on midfielders recently but a lot of them are either poor or just average kicks. As a result of this, I think we feel as though we don't know enough about our tall forwards or our tall defenders to determine whether or not they're good enough because of issues in the middle of the ground. We went into the draft this year with a focus on correcting these issues in the middle of the ground. We overcompensated and gathered a collection of very good kicks/decision makers, knowing that the chances of getting five hits in the draft was unlikely - if we can get two or three of these types out of the players we've drafted, we've gone some way to correcting the ball distribution/turnover issues in one draft. By correcting these issues we can get a better idea of how good our talls are, and then make calls further down the track on what needs more stocking up.


2)From all reports we were interested in key position players at our pick 6 when we still had it, which further supports this suggestion.

Nice thread Dan.
1) I agree with the thrust of this in that turnovers, bad decision making, execution and a few defensive passengers up the ground have put the back 6 under more pressure than they should have been and to an extent have delayed fair assessment of their capabilities. And going the other way was a lottery for similar reasons. Important that we get M Boyd and Stevens (turnovers, decision making and execution) out of the midfield by the end of the year, not withstanding that we will need their physicality and defensive pressure in there for part of the season so the younger ones aren't over taxed. Can't see a spot for either of them in that part of the ground beyond this season. Other defensive passengers now playing for other clubs or retired and the younger ones should be able to step up defensively this season and sustain it for longer from next.

2)We were certainly interested in Peter Wright and he in us but T Boyd is a good result for us.

 

[Zephiisdaman]

Dan, that analysis is absolutely fantastic. We've all been saying it but your statistics prove that we are far too small overall.
I disagree that Daniel is an anomaly. Even if he was 20 cm taller it would bring the overall average of the list about .7 of a cm overall. It still makes our list well below AFL average. Also each club do have at least one smaller player although obviously not as small as Caleb.
make no mistake I think Caleb is an inspired pick, a real POD. I am more concerned with the lack of variance in the rest of our draftees,
Look forward to the next instalment.

 

[McCraeBF]

Do you think we have recruited well?

Have we the building blocks to win a flag

Brad Johnson v Stringer

Chris Grant v Boyd

Scott West v McCrae

Rohan Smith v Bontenpelli

Matthew Croft v Roughead

Matthew Robbins v Dalhouse

Matthew Boyd v Libba

Lidsay Gillbee v JJ

Gia V Hunter

Luke Darcy v Campbell

When you look at it like this WOW the blocks are laid think the oldest player there is Roughead 23-24 we have more players on our list that could be A graders than ever before.

Add....
Hrovatt
Wood
McLean
Webb
Grant
Honeychurch
Talia
Smith

We should all be buying memberships right now a 5 year membership.... (Wow great idea me ) for a club like us have a 5 year membership for say $1200 they put the money away at 6% 10 thousand 5 year members keep in front of the big boys.....Thats over 1 million to put in the bank at 6%--Any won speak to simon garlick

 

[GreatSouthWest]

We should all be buying memberships right now a 5 year membership.... (Wow great idea me ) for a club like us have a 5 year membership for say $1200 they put the money away at 6% 10 thousand 5 year members keep in front of the big boys.....Thats over 1 million to put in the bank at 6%--Any won speak to simon garlick

Interesting first post McCraeBF. I don't want to derail the thread but:

- Membership money is used as working capital of the club (along with sponsorship money etc)
- People won't pay for a five year membership that isn't at least partially discounted
- Earning $60k in interest when you have historical debt 8-10 times the amount of $1M isn't feasible
- Getting 6% interest from a reputable financial institution/bank with current interest rates isn't a reality
- A 6% return would not be considered an economic return and, as above, the money would be invested elsewhere in the football department/paying down debt.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

Hoping to get part 2 up before Christmas but have quite a bit to get through before then. Will do my best.

Do you think we have recruited well?

Have we the building blocks to win a flag

Brad Johnson v Stringer

Chris Grant v Boyd

Scott West v McCrae

Rohan Smith v Bontenpelli

Matthew Croft v Roughead

Matthew Robbins v Dalhouse

Matthew Boyd v Libba

Lidsay Gillbee v JJ

Gia V Hunter

Luke Darcy v Campbell

When you look at it like this WOW the blocks are laid think the oldest player there is Roughead 23-24 we have more players on our list that could be A graders than ever before.

Add....
Hrovatt
Wood
McLean
Webb
Grant
Honeychurch
Talia
Smith

I think we've recruited well over the past few years but there's a lot of water to go under the bridge before the players you've listed can be compared to the past players presented above. We're yet to see pretty much anything from a few of the players you've listed and the jury's still out on a lot of them. I think our list is starting to take shape but we still need quality in all areas of the ground, continued development, and a breakout from our key position players and skilful types before we can start looking at it as a potential challenger.

 

[Dogsman16]

Do you think we have recruited well?

Have we the building blocks to win a flag

Brad Johnson v Stringer

Chris Grant v Boyd

Scott West v McCrae

Rohan Smith v Bontenpelli

Matthew Croft v Roughead

Matthew Robbins v Dalhouse

Matthew Boyd v Libba

Lidsay Gillbee v JJ

Gia V Hunter

Luke Darcy v Campbell

When you look at it like this WOW the blocks are laid think the oldest player there is Roughead 23-24 we have more players on our list that could be A graders than ever before.

Add....
Hrovatt
Wood
McLean
Webb
Grant
Honeychurch
Talia
Smith

We should all be buying memberships right now a 5 year membership.... (Wow great idea me ) for a club like us have a 5 year membership for say $1200 they put the money away at 6% 10 thousand 5 year members keep in front of the big boys.....Thats over 1 million to put in the bank at 6%--Any won speak to simon garlick

The good news is, is that we only had 3 of those players actually playing during 2008 - 2010. The rest were all gone and we actually improved once most had retired. Really Roughy should be compared to Lake, Dahlhaus to Aker, Macrae to Griffen, Bontempelli to Cooney, Campbell to Minson, Boyd to Hall, etc. But it does stack up pretty favourably that we will be ok in the long term, just integral that we add another cog or two to our developing list to match those names above. Some big boots to fill.

 

[doggies ftw]

I love your work Dannnn. But to be honest I really don't get why it matters that the list is overall a little bit shorter than other lists. You people realise were talking cm's right?! Every single premiership list is different comparing very very basic things like overall height of a list is just so pointless its not funny. At the end of the day we've got a good spine in the making, a few extra tall midfielders, and a few tall flanker types. If the rest of the team is littered with high quality smalls to average size players who are good footballers, I couldn't give a flying ****.

 

[doggies ftw]

Using 1-3cm differences as proof that players have grown since we drafted them is meaningless. For years, players heights have varied ( up and down) during their careers - often this is due to the method used. And other posters have noted the variances between sources. Unless players are measured each year using the same equipment/location and the same tilt of their head, and the same footwear (or no footwear including socks), there will always be discrepancies. A player starting their career at 192, for example, then being listed at 194 or 195 during their career, may actually retire without ever having grown at all.

Which proves that its ridiculous to suggest that a player who is 192 cant play a position that a 195cm player can.

 

[Doggies1972]

I was thinking about the height thing whilst just watching the Freo game replay and then I thought of Boyd and re watched his highlights. I can't wait.

I think that highlight real is a fine example of height not being a major factor. Except for the second grab, where he was in front of the pack, every other goal resulted from winning the ball on the ground, shrugging an opponent or being in the clear. His height had little to do with anything.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

I love your work Dannnn. But to be honest I really don't get why it matters that the list is overall a little bit shorter than other lists. You people realise were talking cm's right?! Every single premiership list is different comparing very very basic things like overall height of a list is just so pointless its not funny. At the end of the day we've got a good spine in the making, a few extra tall midfielders, and a few tall flanker types. If the rest of the team is littered with high quality smalls to average size players who are good footballers, I couldn't give a flying ****.

The issue is though that the bolded is a long way from being proven. I don't care as much about the list being 2cm below the league on average as some on here seem to - in fact it was actually the overall distribution (ie. what's shown in the histogram) that was alarming for me. As I've said numerous times throughout the thread, a team with our distribution can be elite - it doesn't mean anything with regards to results or quality. But while we all like to be optimistic with our talls, our spine has not yet matched our optimism with results. We still search for long-term key position players at both ends of the ground - but our distribution shows that our search extends to much shallower depths than many other sides seeking quality height. If a good proportion of our tall players end up good then that's fantastic, we're on the right track; but if several of them fail we have very few others developing concurrently. In short, for a team as desperate for tall talent as we are it makes little sense for us to have so few on the list.

That said, I've always argued that if we don't view a tall as being good enough, we shouldn't take them just because they're tall. I just think that at some point something's gotta give if we are to find enough tall talent to be successful.

 

[Doggies1972]

I think if people rated reach instead of height there may be a bit more justification in regards to the height issue.For me its one of the most irrelevant stats in footy, just like the Boyd clip posted, height is minuscule in regards to most footy, and rarely results in points on the board....... especially when talking cm's.

 

[TBOW]

I think if people rated reach instead of height there may be a bit more justification in regards to the height issue.For me its one of the most irrelevant stats in footy, just like the Boyd clip posted, height is minuscule in regards to most footy, and rarely results in points on the board....... especially when talking cm's.

Like Ayden Kennedy who used to play for North.
Measured in at 192 but probably only had the shoulder height of a 185cm player. Had the longest neck in football.